Halloween: 5 Things Men Should Know

However, upon his death, Stingy Jack learned that heaven had no place for a jackass like him, so he descended into hell, but the devil did the honorable thing: he kept up his end of their deal and denied him entrance. Caught between a hot rock (hell) and a high place (heaven), Jack had no choice but to wander endlessly in the darkness between the two, using a lantern he made from a hollowed-out turnip that was lit up with one of hell’s embers that had been generously donated by the devil.

4- The first jack-o'-lanterns were made from turnips

Nineteenth century Irish immigrants to America brought many traditions with them to their new country, and one of them was the jack-o'-lantern. In their case, however, it was a turnip carved out to make room for a light — a practice in accord with the legend of Stingy Jack.

Yet, according to the Ulster American Folk Park in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, when those immigrants arrived in America they had trouble finding turnips, so they turned to a vegetable native to their new land: the pumpkin. The commercial success of the holiday then contributed to the spread of the traditions associated with this American interpretation.

5- Halloween was the ancient Celtic New Year's Eve

For the Celts, the new year began on November 1; or, in more drastic terms, it began at the traditional end of summer harvest and the onset of winter — the seasonal commencement of death. On the night before, the Celts believed that the realms of both the living and the dead became fuzzy enough to permit dead spirits to create enormous problems, such as destroying crops meant to sustain them through the difficult winter months.

The presence of these spirits enabled Celtic priests, known as Druids, to make reasonable predictions about just how harsh the winters would be, providing the villages with some guidance about how to manage the coming months. While accompanying festivities did not include fireworks, party hats and wobbly chants of “Auld Lang Syne,” they did feature costumes, bonfires and the sharing of scary stories (fortune-telling, actually, but depending on the content, it could be very scary).